The defendant, named only as Suliman al-S., 28, was sentenced to four yearsand nine months for the 2013 abduction carried out in Damascus by an Islamist militant group. German prosecutors had appealed against a more lenient prison term of threeand a half years that the Stuttgart court had handed down in September 2017. Suliman al-S. arrived in Germany as a refugee in 2014 and was later grantedasylum. In January 2016 he became the first Syrian to be arrested in Germany forwar crimes committed in his homeland. The Stuttgart court in September 2017 found him guilty of war crimes and aiding and abetting the abduction of UN observer Carl Campeau.

Source: The Local January 23, 2019 13:54 UTC